VN Ren'Py Abandoned Ecchi Sensei [Day 22-23 Final] [BlueCat]

4.10 star(s) 146 Votes
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Dragon59

Dragon59

Conversation Conqueror
Apr 24, 2020
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Smarmint said:
I am not a game developer, but I program in Python and several other languages for a living. I think with everything, the best advice as a beginner is to keep it simple, and to not try to reinvent the wheel. Whatever you want to do, especially as a beginner, has been done many times before, and much of the code is available online, for free.

After you have lots of projects under your belt, then try to tweak things if absolutely necessary.

RenPy does most things for you, which is why there are so many low effort games released every day. Look at F95, there are at least 20 games released a day, about 50% or more in RenPy. 90% of the games just have a custom main menu graphic, with everything else totally stock RenPy.
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Thanks for the advice. I'll take it to heart.
 
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Smarmint

Smarmint

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Mar 23, 2019
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baloneysammich said:
Isn't there enough to criticize about this game without resorting to hyperbole?
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I like Ecchi Sensei. Too much for what is going on, unfortunately. I hope that all of us can be proven wrong one day, and that we will login and see a surprise update, with new content.

But, what did I say that wasn't correct? Are there any choices other than "see scene" or "skip scene"? Sure, Bluecat uses different language like "Visit Mao's Room" or "Go To Bed", but basically each choice is just to see a particular scene or not. Occasionally there will be a choice of two different scenes presented to the player, but none of the choices, as far as I can tell from the gameplay, affect anything other than the current moment. So no need to track a lot of long-term player variables.

If I missed something, and there are long term choices that I just forgot about, since it has been awhile, than I will stand corrected. My only point was that the status updates try to make it sound like Ecchi Sensei is an especially complex game, which is why so much re-coding is needed. My point is just that ES seems very simple compared to other RenPy games. The only thing "special" that I can discern are the bios, which is fairly basic, and the phone, which is done in many, many RenPy games without issues.

Look, I don't want to sound like a broken record (too late probably). I honestly hope for success for Ecchi Sensei. It is not the absolute greatest game here, but it is honestly quite fun to play, and I enjoy the large variety of characters, and the story. I just wish the devs were straight with the fans. Just tell us that he wants to take 10 months off to learn Japanese, or travel, or work on another job, or whatever. Or admit that he doesn't know what to do next, that he has writer's block, or whatever the issue is, and that he hopes he can get back to it. Or that a team member took all the code, and won't give it back to him, or whatever the real problem is. But what we are being told, at least his paying supporters on Patreon, about how the code is so complicated that it takes nearly a year to "merge" everything together, makes no logical sense, and it hasn't since January when he told everyone that the merge was almost complete.
 
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Smarmint

Smarmint

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Mar 23, 2019
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Dragon59 said:
You're old enough to know what a broken record sounds like?
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Haha. Barely! I played some of my parents old records growing up, mostly Elton John and the Beach Boys, but by the time I had my own money, I bought all my music in cassette tapes. Eventually, I saved up enough from my after-school job to buy a compact disk player. Which I think cost about $400,. It was quite an upgrade to cassette tapes. No more rewinding!
 
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baloneysammich

baloneysammich

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Jun 3, 2017
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Smarmint said:
But, what did I say that wasn't correct? Are there any choices other than "see scene" or "skip scene"? Sure, Bluecat uses different language like "Visit Mao's Room" or "Go To Bed", but basically each choice is just to see a particular scene or not. Occasionally there will be a choice of two different scenes presented to the player, but none of the choices, as far as I can tell from the gameplay, affect anything other than the current moment. So no need to track a lot of long-term player variables.
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I'm not making a case for complexity here, but for example there are the character routes with Fuyu and Himiko, how you handle Christa's secret, whether or not to indulge Nanami's fetish, whether or not you visit Satomi in the club, etc.

In fact, given that they currently track choices with variables like d1d1 (ie. day 1 decision 1), it's easy to find that in D10_11.rpy for example there are over 20 references to previous days' decisions.* Even if the implications are minor or even trivial, they're being used regardless.

* Full disclosure, that seems to be an outlier but it happened to be the first I checked.

Smarmint said:
My only point was that the status updates try to make it sound like Ecchi Sensei is an especially complex game, which is why so much re-coding is needed.
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Meanwhile, to me the updates sound like the genuine perspective of amateurs who are "trying to solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it." Granted I didn't start paying close attention to the updates until after reading Skummy's "incompetence defense" and learning that... well, let's just say learning something else that IMO bolstered his case. So maybe I'm guilty of confirmation bias.
 
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Dukez

Dukez

Member
Dec 19, 2020
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Surely they aren't rewriting the engine core to accomodate some storage system changes, which apparently are tied to saves? Like what the... just learn to code properly and be smart with what actually needs saving and what it should do when it opens that save.

They unironically could've started from scratch and just copy/pasted pictures & dialogue text and it would be done MONTHS ago. Heck they could've even changed engines to UE4, learn how that engine works, built a full visual novel system for said game, taken advantage of the Oodle compression for smaller game size on all those pictures as a side benefit (and hopefully UE4's blueprints forcing them to write data smarter) and they'd come out ahead of where they are currently.

I bet they will have even more problems in the future, god forbid if the current coder leaves (probably should've been replaced anyway if that's their solution) and gives them a mess for someone else to try and fix.
 
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blackpowerman

New Member
May 17, 2017
10
46
damn dude, their patrons fell OFF

if they couldn't get an update out for 6k a month they sure as hell aint getting it for 3k

let all software devs learn from this: Learn what people like about your stuff, and then do more of that

you make a gonzo incest porn game, no one cares if you have dynamic porn camera angles (which is nearly impossible in renpy as it stands). They just care if you fuck everyone in a 100 mile radius of the town
 
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lapau

Newbie
Jan 9, 2018
25
49
Dragon59 said:
Hi Guys!
It's time again for a new state of the Nation status report.
Those of you with access to #gitlab-notification in Discord might have seen that new revisions have recently been made to the calendar and the Ecchi Phone 2.0 (or is it 3.0 by now?).
We are also working on the translation files for the Charinfo and its functionality as a whole.
Some of you have asked me why we not just release Month 1 but instead keep wasting time on “pointless” features.
Well, for some might the features be a waste of time, but for others, they are a big part of what makes the game what it is.
Even if we'd give up the features, that would only marginally speed up the work since the big challenge lies in Ren'Py itself — It's necessary to disassemble the core code of the engine because of our new storage system.
Still, we're making progress, and to all of those out there who, like me, want to see new Ecchi Sensei updates, times are getting better, I promise. We will be back to our usual rhythm after Month 1, and we will be giving out monstrous updates again.
To be able to present you a playable Month 1 version as soon as possible, we will proceed to work our asses off.
So long,
Blue
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Still no exact date, or even a crude estimation. That's a classic BlueCat right there.
 
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baloneysammich

baloneysammich

Active Member
Jun 3, 2017
998
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lapau said:
Still no exact date, or even a crude estimation. That's a classic BlueCat right there.
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Not entirely fair IMO. Early in the merge process he 1) made it clear he was reluctant to give exact dates because of what happened during week 1 merge, and 2) made several estimations. The fact that the estimations proved to be spectacularly incorrect probably made him reluctant to do any more of that, too.
 
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4.10 star(s) 146 Votes